No it's not. the -final compile only uses the "-final" command which is equal to "-extraSky 16". It just fires more rays from the sky, making the light_enviroment lighting more accurate.
What the three other commands from the article do is:
1: Instead of having a single point for each model to calculate it's shadowing, the entire model is used and it will be lit like it makes sense.
2: Instead of the unacurate colision model, the actual model will be used to calculates shadows with.
3: If a model has a transparent texture it will now properly let light through at points where it is transparent.
Oh, and there is the custom .rad file thing, but that's only useful when you really want to use its features, so you probably don't need to worry about it for now.
Dunno why Valve didn't add those extremly important commands to one of the advanced compile options, but you wouldn't want to only have these compile options with the -final compile because -file will extend your compile time massivly while the other lighting options only make your compile by 15-30% longer.
Also setting up your own compile options makes you able to quickly switch between compile options. What I do is having a vvis compile for normal and one for fast, and then make vrad compiles for:
-fast -hdr
-hdr -staticproppolys -textureshadows
-staticproplighting -lights customlights.rad
-both -staticproppolys -textureshadows -staticproplighting -lights customlights.rad
-both -staticproppolys -textureshadows -staticproplighting -lights customlights.rad -extrasky 16
upper one is a basic test with bad lighting, second one is better lighting but HDR only because my game is in HDR, third one is also for testing however compile for both HDR & LDR so it can be tested on a server where some players may have LDR and finally the 4th option is the final compile.
Now I guess you could probably just the command to the -final compile and never bother with it again until you want to compile for final, however if the final compile still has some weird shadowing in a place you would just end up with long compile times just to change some shadows, so try setting up your own custom cpmpile with more options to be more efficient